Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus supporting a cloud print service, a control method thereof, a storage medium, and an image forming system.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, many office machines such as a copying machine and a printer support a cloud print service. The cloud print service is a technology that allows a user to upload image data in a portable terminal such as a smartphone to a cloud server and instruct an image forming apparatus in a remote site to print the data. The cloud print service also enables the user to instruct the image forming apparatus in the remote site to print data held on the cloud server.
In print of this service, image data can be transmitted directly from a desktop or mobile application to any printer (irrespective of the maker that has manufactured the printer) via a known general-purpose image format without the need to use a printer driver. The image format includes, for example, standard data formats such as PDF (Portable Document Format) that is the international standard of ISO 32000-1. The image format also includes the PWG (Printer Working Group)-Raster format standardized by PWG that is one of the standardization working groups of IEEE.
A job on the cloud server is held in a status such as Queued (=job received)/InProgress (=print processing in progress)/Done(=printed) and managed. If a job in the InProgress (=print processing in progress) status exists on the cloud server, the image forming apparatus is required to actively obtain and print the job and change it to the Done (=printed) status. As an example of guaranteeing the print order of a job, Japanese Patent No. 5654806 proposes processing of embedding a job ticket including the print attribute of a job or the like in the print order and causing an image forming apparatus to interpret the contents of the job ticket and print it in accordance with the predetermined order.
However, the conventional technique has problems to be described below. For example, if the network between the image forming apparatus and the cloud server is disconnected by power-off of the image forming apparatus or disconnection of a network cable halfway through print, a job remaining in the “processing in progress (=InProgress)” status is held on the cloud server. The image forming apparatus needs to automatically reprint the job in the “processing in progress (=InProgress)” status. However, if the image forming apparatus receives another new job before the print of the job in the “processing in progress” status, and some error occurs halfway through print of the received new job, a plurality of jobs in the “processing in progress (=InProgress)” status may exist on the cloud server. In this case, the image forming apparatus cannot determine which job should be printed first. In addition, if a job is divided into a plurality of jobs, and the print order of the divided jobs is linked using another information different from the job, such as a job ticket, a restriction to, for example, inhibit partial deletion of the divided jobs occurs, and flexible system operation is impossible.